CHAPTER XIV. Is Your School Manufacturing Physical Defects?

IS YOUR SCHOOL MANUFACTURING PHYSICAL DEFECTS?

Last year a conference on the physical welfare of school children was told by a woman principal: "Of course we need physicians to examine our children and to teach the parents, but many of us principals believe that our school curriculum and our school environment manufacture more physical defects in a month than all your physicians and nurses will correct in a year." At the same meeting the physical director of schools of New York City appealed eloquently for "biological engineers" at school, who would test the child's strength as building engineers are employed to test the strength of beams and foundations. As explanation for the need of the then recently organized National School Hygiene Association, he elaborated the proposition that school requirements and school environment damage child health. "Ocular defects are in direct ratio to the length of time the pupil has attended school.... A desk that is too high may easily be the indirect agent for causing scoliosis, producing myopia or astigmatism.... Physically examine school children by all means, but do not fail to examine school desks."

Fifty schools in different parts of New York City were examined last year with especial reference to the factors likely to cause or to aggravate physical defects. The results, tabulated and analyzed, prove that the woman principal was right; many schools are so built or so conducted, many school courses are so devised or so executed, that children are inevitably injured by the environment in which the compulsory education law forces them to spend their formative years.

Recently I noticed that our little office girl, so anaemic and nervous when she left school that we hesitated to employ her, was becoming rosy and spirited. The child herself explained the change: "I like it better. I have more money to spend. I get more outdoor exercise, and then, oh, the room is so much sunnier and there is more air and the people are all so nice!" And these were just the necessities which were lacking in the school from which she came. Moreover, it is a fair commentary on the school work and the school hygiene in too many of our towns and cities to-day. "I like it better" means that school work is not adapted to the dominant interests of the child, that the curriculum includes subjects remote from the needs and ambitions of the modern school child, and fails to include certain other subjects which it recognizes as useful and necessary, and therefore finds interesting. "I have more money to spend" means that this little girl was able to have certain things, like a warm, pretty dress, rubbers, or an occasional trolley ride, which she longed for and needed. "I get more outdoor exercise" means that there was no open-air playground for her school, that "setting up" exercises were forgotten, that recess was taken up in rushing home, eating lunch, and rushing back again, and that "after school" was filled up with "helping mother with the housework." "The office is so much sunnier and I get more air" accounts for the increase in vitality; and "the people are all so nice," for the happy expression and initiative which the undiscriminating discipline at school had crushed out.

For such unsanitary conditions crowded sections of great cities have no apologies to make to rural districts. A wealthy suburb recently learned that there was overcrowding in every class room, and that one school building was so unsanitary as to be a menace to the community. Unadjustable desks, dry sweeping, feather dusters, shiny blackboards, harassing discipline that wrecks nerves, excessive home study and subjects that bore, are not peculiar to great cities. In a little western town a competition between two self-governing brigades for merit points was determined by the amount of home study; looking back fifteen years, I can see that I was encouraging anaemic and overambitious children to rob themselves of play, sleep, and vitality. Many a rural school violates with impunity more laws of health than city factories are now permitted to transgress.

After child labor is stopped, national and state child labor committees will learn that their real interest all the time has been child welfare, not child age, and will be able to use much of the old literature, simply substituting for "factory" the word "school" when condemning "hazardous occupations likely to sap [children's] nervous energy, stunt their physical growth, blight their minds, destroy their moral fiber, and fit them for the moral scrap heap."

Many of the evils of school environment the teacher can avert, others the school trustee should be expected to correct. So far as unsanitary conditions are permitted, the school accentuates home evils, whereas it should counteract them by instilling proper health habits that will be taken home and practiced. Questions such as were asked in Miss North's study will prove serviceable to any one desiring to know the probable effect of a particular school environment upon children subject to it. Especially should principals, superintendents, directors, and volunteer committeemen apply such tests to the public, parochial, or private school, orphanage or reformatory for which they may be responsible.

I. NEIGHBORHOOD HEALTH RESOURCES

1. Is the district congested?

2. Is congestion growing?

3. How far away is the nearest public park?

a. Is it large enough? b. Has it a playground or beauty spot? c. Has it swings and games? d. Is play supervised? e. Have children of different ages equal opportunities, or do the large children monopolize the ground? f. Are children encouraged by teachers and parents to use this park?

4. Are the streets suitable for play?

a. Does the sun reach them? b. Are they broad? c. Are they crowded with traffic?

5. How far away is the nearest public bath?

a. Has it a swimming pool? b. Has it showers? c. Is it used as an annex to the school?

II. EFFECT OF SCHOOL EQUIPMENT UPON HEALTH

1. Is there an indoor yard?

a. Is the area adequate or inadequate? b. Is the floor wood, cement, or dirt? c. Is the heat adequate or deficient? d. Is the ventilation adequate or deficient? e. Is the daylight adequate, deficient, or almost lacking? f. Is there equipment for light gymnastics and games? g. Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally?

2. Is there an outdoor yard?

a. Is the area ample or inadequate? b. Is the area mainly occupied by toilets? c. Is the daylight sufficient or deficient? d. For how many hours does the sun reach it? e. Is it equipped for games? f. How much larger ought it to be? g. Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally?

3. Is there a gymnasium?

a. Is it large enough? b. Is it used for a gymnasium? c. Is it cut up into class rooms? d. Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally?

4. Is there a roof playground?

a. Is there open ventilation? b. Is it used in the daytime? c. Is it used at night? d. Is it used during the summer? e. Is it monopolized by the larger children? f. Is it used out of school hours; by special classes, athletic teams, etc., or by pupils generally?

5. Are washing facilities adequate?

a. How many pupils per washbasin? b. Are there individual towels? c. Have eye troubles been spread by roller towels? d. Are only clean towels permitted? e. Are there bathing facilities; are these adequate? f. Are swimming pools used for games, contests, etc.? g. Are bathing facilities used out of school hours? h. Who is responsible for cleanliness of towels, washbasins, and swimming pools? i. How often is water changed in swimming pool, or is it constantly changing?

6. Is adequate provision made for clean drinking water?

a. Are sanitary fountains used that prevent contamination of faucet or water? b. How often are cups or faucets cleaned?

7. Is provision made for airing outer clothing?

a. Are children permitted to pile their clothing in the class room? b. Are there hooks for each child? c. Are lockers provided with wire netting to permit ventilation? d. Are lockers or hooks in the halls or in the basement? e. Have you ever thought of the disciplinary and social value of cheap coat hangers to prevent wrinkling and tearing?

III. THE CLASS ROOM AS A PLACE OF CONFINEMENT

1. How many sittings are provided?

a. How many pupils are there?

2. What is the total floor area?

a. What proportion is not occupied by desks?

3. Are the seats adjustable?

a. Are the seats adjusted to pupils? b. Where desks are adjustable, are short children seated in low desks, or are children seated according to class or according to discipline exigencies without regard to size of desk? c. Are seats placed properly with reference to light?

4. Is the light ample and proper?

a. For how many hours must artificial light be used in the daytime? b. Is artificial light adequate for night work? c. Does the reflection of light from blackboard and walls injure the eye? d. Are the blackboards black enough? e. Are the walls too dark? f. Is the woodwork too dark? g. Are window panes kept clean?

5. Is the air always fresh?

a. Is ventilation by open windows? b. Is ventilation artificial? c. Does the ventilating apparatus work satisfactorily? d. Are the windows thrown open during recess, and after and before school? e. Do unclean clothes vitiate the atmosphere? f. Do unclean persons vitiate the atmosphere? g. Does bad breath vitiate the atmosphere? h. Are pupils and parents taught that unclean clothes, unclean persons, and bad breath may decrease the benefits of otherwise adequate ventilation and seriously aggravate the evils of inadequate ventilation?

6. Is the temperature properly regulated?

a. Has every class room a thermometer? b. Are teachers required to record the thermometer's story three or more times daily? c. Is excess or deficiency at once reported to the janitor?

7. Are the floors, walls, desks, and windows always clean?

a. How often are they washed? b. Is twice a year often enough? c. Do the floors and walls contain the dust of years? d. Is dry sweeping prohibited? e. Has wet sawdust or even wet sand been tried? f. Has oil ever been used to keep down surface dust on floors? g. Are feather dusters prohibited? h. Are dust rags moist or dry? i. Is an odorless disinfectant used?

8. Does overheating prevail?

a. Do you know teachers and principals who protest against insufficient ventilation, particularly against mechanical ventilation, while they themselves are "in heavy winter clothing in a small room closely sealed, the thermometer at 80 degrees"?

IV. EXERCISE AND RECREATION

1. How much time and at what periods is exercise provided for in the school schedule?

a. Indoors? b. Outdoors?

2. How much exercise indoors and outdoors is actually given?

3. Are the windows open during exercise?

4. Is exercise suited to each child by the school physician after physical examination, or are all children compelled to take the same exercise?

5. Whose business is it to see that rules regarding exercise are strictly enforced?

6. Do clouds of dust rise from the floor during exercise and play?

7. Are children deprived of exercise as a penalty?

8. Should hygiene talks be considered as exercise?

V. THE SCHOOL JANITOR AND CLEANERS

1. Do they understand the relation of cleanliness to vitality?

2. Is their aim to do the least possible amount of work, or to attain the highest possible standard of cleanliness?

3. Will the teacher's complaint of uncleanliness be heeded by trustees? If so, is the teacher not responsible for uncleanliness?

4. Have you ever tried to stimulate the pride of janitors and cleaners for social service?

a. Have you ever tried to show them how much work they save themselves by thorough cleansing? b. Have you ever shown them the danger, to their own health, of dust and dirt that may harbor infection and reduce their own vitality?

5. What effort is made to instruct janitors and cleaners by your school trustees or by your community?

6. Have you explained to pupils the important responsibility of janitors for the health of those in the tenements, office buildings, or schools?

a. Do you see in this an opportunity to emphasize indirectly the mother's responsibility for cleanliness of home?

VI. REQUIREMENTS OF CURRICULUM

1. How much home study is there?

a. How much is required? b. What steps are taken to prevent excessive home study? c. Are light and ventilation conditions at home considered when deciding upon amount of home study?

2. Is the child fitted to the curriculum, or is the curriculum fitted to the child?

a. Does failure or backwardness in studies lead to additional study hours or to regrading? b. Are there too many subjects? c. Are the recitation periods too long? d. Are the exercise periods too short and too few? e. Is there too much close-range work? f. Is it possible to give individual attention to individual needs so as to awaken individual interest?

3. Is follow-up work organized to enlist interest of parents, or, if necessary, of outside agencies in fitting a child to do that for which, if normal, he would be physically adapted?

By reducing the harm done by old buildings and by the traditions of curriculum and discipline, teachers can do a great deal. Perhaps they cannot move the windows or the desks, but they can move the children. If they cannot insure sanitary conditions for home study, they can cut down the home study. If the directors do not provide proper blackboards, they can do less blackboard work. They can make children as conscious, as afraid, and as resentful of dirty air as of dirty teeth. They can make janitors believe that "dry sweeping" or "feather dusting" may give them consumption, and leave most of the dirt in the room to make work for the next day; that adjustable desks are made to fit the child's legs and back, not the monkey wrench; that the thermometer in the schoolroom is a safer guide to heat needed than a boiler gauge in the basement; that fresh air heated by coal is cheaper for the school fund than stale air heated by bodies and by bad breath. Finally, they can make known to pupils, to parents, to principals and superintendents, to health officials and to the public, the extent to which school environment violates the precepts of school hygiene.

If the state requires the attendance of all children between the ages of five and fourteen at school for five hours a day, for five days in the week, for ten months in the year, then it should undertake to see that the machinery it provides for the education of those children for the greater part of the time for nine years of their lives--the formative years of their lives--is neither injuring their health nor retarding their full development.

If the amount of "close-range" work is rapidly manufacturing myopic eyes; if bad ventilation, whether due to faulty construction or to faulty management, is preparing soil for the tubercle bacillus; if children with contagious diseases are not found and segregated; if desks are so ill adapted to children's sizes and physical needs that they are forming crooked spines; if too many children are crowded into one room; if lack of air and light is producing strained eyes and malnutrition; if neither open air, space, nor time is provided for exercise, games, and physical training; if school discipline is adapted neither to the psychology nor the physiology of child or teacher, then the state is depriving the child of a greater right than the compulsory education law forces it to endure. Not only is the right to health sacrificed to the right to education, but education and health are both sacrificed.

In undertaking to enforce the compulsory education law, to put all truants and child laborers in school, the state should be very sure for its own sake that it is not depriving the child of the health on which depends his future usefulness to the state as well as to himself.

TABLE XI

EFFECTS OF A CHILD LABOR LAW

Increase in Chicago Attendance

Grades 4-9

######## 1901-1902

############# 1902-1903

###################################################### 1903-1904

Grades 9-15

####################### 1901-1902

#################### 1902-1903

###################################################### 1903-1904

FOOTNOTES:

The Sanitation of Public Buildings, by William Paul Gerhard, contains a valuable discussion of how the school may avoid manufacturing physical defects.

By Professor Lila V. North, Baltimore College for Women, for the New York Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children, 105 East 22d Street, New York City.